“Do you think she’s asleep?” asked Assad. “Maybe she’s still a bit out of it on her medication.”
“Phew, what now?” groaned Carl. He’d rather deal with two drugged-up pimps going berserk with knives than this, because at least he knew where he was with the former. Who knew what the risks were if they barged in just like that?
“I wish we knew if she was in there. Imagine if she . . .”
“If she what?”
“Nothing, Assad. Knock on the door a couple of times, and make it loud. Maybe she can’t hear the doorbell throughout the entire apartment.”
“Hang on, maybe we can ask that woman if she’s seen her?” asked Assad after knocking.
“Who?” asked Carl, looking around.
“The one who twitched at the curtains a moment ago next door in Zimmermann’s apartment.”
“In Zimmermann’s place? I didn’t see anyone. Are you sure?”
“Er, yes. I think so. See, the curtain isn’t hanging straight now.”
“Come on, then,” said Carl.
He rang the neighbor’s bell, but nothing happened.
“Are you certain, Assad? Who would be in there? Rigmor Zimmermann hasn’t risen from the dead.”
Assad shrugged and knocked forcefully on the door, and when that didn’t have any effect he knelt down on the doormat and shouted at the top of his voice through the mail slot: “Hi in there. We saw you. We just want to ask you a couple of questions.”
Carl smiled. The doormat with the intricate pattern almost made it look like he was kneeling on a prayer rug, praying through the mail slot.
“Can you see anything in there?” asked Carl.
“No. The hallway is completely empty.”
Carl leaned forward and looked through the gap in the curtains into the kitchen. He couldn’t see much, only some dirty dishes and clean tableware that hadn’t been put back in the cupboard. But then again, Rigmor Zimmermann couldn’t have known that she would never come back to clean up.
He tapped on the window with his fingernails, and Assad shouted a few more times that they would like to speak to the person he had seen at the window.
“Maybe you didn’t see anything, Assad,” said Carl after a minute of knocking and ringing the bell in vain. “If we’d been smart we would have remembered to bring the key Birgit gave us.”
“I’ve got a lockpick down in the car, Carl.”
Carl shook his head. “We’d better leave that to our colleagues in homicide. They’re going to come here at some point anyway to check the apartment again. Let’s just let ourselves into Rose’s place and see if she’s there.”
Assad took out the key and pressed down on the door handle, but just as he was about to put the key in the lock, the door swung open.
This doesn’t bode well, thought Carl.
Assad looked baffled as he silently walked through the door. He called Rose’s name a couple of times so she wouldn’t get a shock when she suddenly saw them standing there.
But the place was as silent as the grave.
“Bloody hell, she’s certainly been here, Carl,” said Assad. He looked shocked to say the least, and with good reason. Everything that would normally be on the shelves, other furniture, or windowsills had been thrown on the floor. Soil from potted plants was scattered over the sofa, broken coffee cups and plates were spread here and there, and a couple of chairs had been smashed against the floor. It was complete chaos.
“Rose!” shouted Assad while snooping around in the other rooms.
“She’s not here,” he said after a few seconds. “But come on out to the bathroom, Carl.”
Carl tore himself away from the laptop on the dining table and went out there.
“Look!” Assad was standing with a forlorn expression, pointing down at the wastebasket, which was full of bandages, packaging, Tampax boxes, cotton balls, and various medicines.
“It doesn’t look good, Assad.”
“Is that what you meant before?” He sighed. “That she might have taken her own life?”
Carl was unable to answer. He pursed his lips and returned to the sitting room. He just didn’t know.
He sniffed the vase on the table. There had been an undefinable mix of alcohol in it. Then he looked at the screen on her laptop again.
“Come in here, Assad. Rose has been on the police website and intranet.”
He pointed at the broken screen. “There’s no doubt that she took an interest in the Zimmermann case, so she does know. I’m afraid that might have pushed her over the edge.”
He opened her search tabs one by one.
“These searches are very superficial. It’s as if she just wanted to bring herself up to speed with the main details of the murder,” he said.
“I think that’s good, Carl. Then I think we can safely say she didn’t kill Zimmermann,” said Assad quietly.
Carl looked at him uncomprehendingly. What was he talking about?
“Not that I had any reason to think that, but it was a strange coincidence that they were neighbors, wasn’t it?”
“Damn it, Assad, you shouldn’t think like that.”
Curly looked sullen. He knew that.
“I’m afraid I also found this in the bathroom, Carl.”
He placed a Gillette razor on top of the jacket on the table.
“There’s no blade in it. It’s been screwed off.”
Carl felt a stab to his heart. It couldn’t be true.
He inspected the razor and let it fall back down on the jacket. There was a dull click when it landed.
Carl looked puzzled, grabbed a corner of the jacket, and lifted it off the table.
There was Rose’s cell phone and a lot of other things that made them freeze: a plastic basket with medicines that could easily be mixed into a lethal cocktail, the blade from the razor, and, even more ominously, a letter written in Rose’s handwriting.
“Oh no,” whispered Assad and said a short, silent prayer in Arabic.
Carl had to force himself to read the letter out to Assad.
Dear sisters,
There has been no end to my curse, so don’t despair over my death, read the first line.
He hardly breathed while reading the rest.
They looked at each other for a minute without speaking. What was there to say?
“It’s dated May 26th, Carl,” said Assad, finally breaking the silence. Carl had never heard him sound so exhausted before. “That was last Thursday, the same day she discharged herself, and I don’t think she’s been here since.” He sighed. “She could be lying dead anywhere, Carl. And maybe she . . .” He couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence.
Carl looked around the sitting room. It was as if she had tried to reflect her shattered mind with her vandalism. As if she had wanted to make clear to those around her that there was nothing to grieve over and nothing to be surprised about.
“She was too clever for her own good, Carl, so I don’t think we’ll ever find her.” His face looked expressionless, apart from his eyebrows and his lips, which were quivering.
Carl put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s very sad, Assad. It really is, my friend.”
Assad turned his face toward him with a gentle, almost grateful look in his eyes. He nodded and picked up the suicide note to read it again.
“There’s another piece of paper underneath it, Assad,” said Carl. He picked it up and read it aloud: